Monday, May 25, 2009

Remembering the future

I spent the better half of this morning trying to remember the future. It was one of the greater lessons in futility that I have experienced to date. "It's a poor sort of memory that works backwards", said the queen. The queen also implies the idea of time being directional by stating that memory has a direction.

The past, while viewed through rose colored glasses of individual subjectivity, does indeed have fixed points of reference, unchangeable events that are stagnant and can't be argued. Therefore, I can conclude that the past, isn't entirely an illusion, so to speak. And knowing this, that would lead me to believe that the future may have unchangeable fixed events as well. Or is that the difference? I mean, tomorrow the sun will rise, but will it forever? Probably not. Is the future entirely an illusion? If that is the case, then one's memory could never "work forwards". And that leads me to psychics, noting here that I do indeed believe in psychic phenomenon, however I think it is less "phenomenal" and more like a literal sixth sense that everyone has. But their memories are in essence working forwards at times. Are they tapping into some collective consciousness a la Jung, and would that negate the individualistic idea of a sixth sense?

I read an article in National Geographic about memory. There are some people that can remember every detail about everything that happened to them in their entire lives. Like what they ate for breakfast 35 years ago, and every year thereafter. There are people that have no short term memory, people with deteriorating memories (varying degrees from CRS syndrome to Alzheimer's) Why do we remember the things we remember? Why can I remember the smell of my grandmothers perfume, but not what I ate for breakfast 20 years ago? What dictates which things are important to retain and which are not? What happens to those memories after we die? Where do they go? Into some giant archive?

Getting back to the idea queen implying that time is directional by stating that memory has a direction. Time moving forward. Not a new concept by any stretch of the imagination.more to come...